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Vango Rosewood tent review

The 'TentLife romantic getaway' featuring the Vango Rosewood TC is described as a family tent and is a part of their ‘Exceed TC Collection’. It was new for 2018 and described as “the epitome of boutique Glamping!”.

Ever since I saw this tipi style tent at the start of 2018, I wanted to get my hands on it and arrange a romantic getaway for myself and Mrs TentLife. The emphasis would be all about romance and togetherness, and that to me is what this tent oozes in bucketloads. It is a family tent (and it does have the room), but I really wanted to show it off as a couples romantic getaway tent.

No kids
It was our wedding anniversary in August so we booked ourselves to stay at Aberafon campsite in Gwynedd, Wales. A number of people from the TentLife Facebook group had stopped there and had posted some lovely photos. If you don’t have an electric hookup you can get a pitch right at the edge of the beach looking onto the ocean. So that’s what we did, got ourselves the romantic Rosewood tent, and a very romantic camping location on which to pitch.
We had already planned our anniversary meal as Mrs TentLife loves a large amount of good quality meat, so steak was on the menu. As we were passing Bala on our way to Aberafon, we stopped off (again) at the cracking T.J.Roberts Butchers who did us a couple of spectacular T-Bone steaks. We were pleasantly surprised by the price too, nearly half the price of what we may at our butchers in the West Midlands.

So along with some nice wine, that was our meal sorted and placed in the Coleman cool box ready for Friday evening.

How easy was the Rosewood to put up?This isn’t a difficult tent to pitch, it only consists of two thick steel poles that join to make one main triangular shaped pole, 2 supporting alloy poles and 1 pole for the front of the canopy all of these poles are alloy . It didn’t take us long to put the poles through and peg it all down, within 30 minutes we were all fully pegged out and happily putting our stuff inside. Not bad for our first pitching, next time will be quicker.

Could one person pitch it on their own? Not really, because the supporting poles need a person on each side to apply tension and fit them into position. However, it wasn’t difficult and we didn’t fall out with each other – although we were in the perfect ‘make-up’ tent.

What’s the tent like inside?The Vango Rosewood is a larger than it looks on most photographs online, so we will try to give you more of an idea of the space available. It’s octagonal in shape and a whopping 4 metres between the opposing sides.

At the time of our getaway, we were testing a couple of Vango Shangri-La 15 Grande Mats. They're large single mats and when pushed together are wider than the double version, and we had these placed right in the centre of the Rosewood with plenty of space to spare.
You will see from the photos that we both had tables on each side of our sleeping area and that there was plenty of space. We also had the dogs large fabric crate with us, our storage boxes plus a couple of folding chairs and we were really happy with the space available.
There are certainly no problems with headroom either as this tent stands tall and proud, it’s rather a head turner, very unusual and attractive.

There is a room divider that can be fitted, it hangs from the roof of the tent. This is really versatile as there are different hanging points that allow it to run either straight across, or in just one corner. We had it set up running across the tent, rolled up into scallops so it looked pretty.

There are plenty of places inside to hang lights, so we hung a couple of cheap round paper lights (from IKEA) from the ceiling and ran our exterior solar fairy lights all over the walls too. It looked wonderful, we hope you agree too.

How did the Rosewood hold up against the weather?
Being right on the beach front, there is always the potential for the wind to get rather blowy. Whether you look at it as a good or bad thing this did happen, and it did get rather blowy one night. For the purposes of the review I suppose you could say that it was a good thing that we experienced some rain and high winds, as we can report our findings back to you.
We were at Aberafon campsite for 4 nights, and for most of the time the weather was changeable but decent. It was a mixed bag, the sun shone and went, the clouds came and went but it was relatively warm and good overall. But we did experience some rain and strong winds also.

The worst wind came on Saturday night, with 38+ mph gusts that were moving slowly throughout the night from south to west. The tent walls were flapping around a lot and I had to go outside to retighten the guy lines and add a few extra pegs (the ground wasn't the best the pegs were pulling out of the soft soil). This wasn’t a reflection on the Vango Rosewood, it would have needed doing with any tent we were in. At one point, we decided to move the van a little so as to shelter the tent a little – that’s how strong the winds were. The ground wasn't the best the pegs were pulling out of the soft soil.

She survived!
We did manage to get some sleep despite the winds efforts, but we didn’t know what tent carnage we were going to wake up to.

Come the morning the wind and rain had moved on, and the tent was perfectly intact. Not a scratch on her except for the wiring on the lights we had fitted to the sun canopy. These had been stretched and snapped by the wind flexing the canopy, which had no damage and had clearly been designed extremely well.

On reflection, because of the wind direction we were probably pitched on the most exposed pitch on the campsite and had we been in another tent we may well have ended up sleeping in the van and then going home early with a broken. I feel that because of the shape of the Rosewood, the wind was deflected around it, also the poles being steel and alloy, this combination helped it to survive the beating.

Quality and Comfort
The polycotton material this tent is made from is a lovely colour and has a nice soft feel to it. Standing up to the wind shows that it is of high quality, and it dried out really quickly in the coastal breeze. There was no rain getting inside, which you can get with some polycotton tents the first time they get wet (see our Vango Illusion tent review).

The tent was very cosy and warm through the nights, even though we didn’t have an electric hook up for some heat, however with the Shangri-La mats and the Vango Aurora Vario Sleeping bag we were never going to be cold.

Aberafon and Wales
We were allowed to have fires on the beach, so we had a few using our fire pit (which I managed to leave behind). We sat watching the stars and listening to the sea waves whilst enjoying some local ales.

The beach at the campsite is dog friendly and they really enjoyed their morning runs along the shore. We took in a few local Welsh walks, visited Beddgelert, climbed a mountain (Moel Hebog) followed by a well needed pub meal (Saracens Head). We even cooked Pizza for breakfast on the last day.

It was arguably the best location for a romantic weekend and experiencing the Rosewood.

Goodbye
The tent was unpegged, poles removed, rolled away easily and returned to it’s large wide mouthed drawstring bag in double quick time.

We had a wonderful time thanks to the location, accommodation and each others company.

Our time in the Vango Rosewood was a very pleasurable experience and it made our wedding anniversary very special. It isn’t a gimmick tent, we have proven that it stands up to wind and rain and it will be being used again by us very soon when we head off for a small gathering in Wales.